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Friday, 19 December 2014

Right, I've gathered up all the DVDs I want to sell along with one CD, a couple of old hard disk drives and my BluRay player I haven't used for ages and have added them to my Sell Basket on the uk.webuy.com (formerlly www.cex.co.uk) and I have just enough to purchase an XBox One from them if I choose the voucher option! :) #hooray!

I shall get them all boxed up and packaged in plenty of bubblewrap and will take them to the Post Office tomorrow so they should arrive first thing next week using the free postage label I printed off from their website.

Wednesday, 17 December 2014

My XBox 360 died a few months ago so I've been without a console for a while now. The main two games I played were Fallout: New Vegas and GTA. As I had my old PC lying around I upgraded my graphics card (a free upgrade as my Boss at work had a better one than I had lying around) so I was able to get a cheap copy of New Vegas and play it on that.

As I'm sure you will be aware, Fallout: New Vegas isn't available on the XBox One and as it's my favourite game of all time I couldn't really see any reason to replace my broken 360 as my 5yr old Dell XPS 420 (with the recently upgraded graphics card) can cope very well with New Vegas.

The only problem I have now is I'm about to do the battle on the Hoover Dam once again so (as they say) the end is nigh!

As I'll soon again be completing New Vegas, a friend of mine recommended Far Cry 3 and leant me

his copy on the PC and I have to say I'm hooked! It took me an hour or so to make my mind up and once I got my head around the killing of animals to be able to create things I could see the amazing similarities to New Vegas.

Although they are totally different games, the things I love about New Vegas are there in Far Cry 3 - if I've had a bad day at work and just want to play a game without thinking too much then I can wander around the map on Far Cry 3 and locate as many towers as I can or find as much loot as I can ready for when I'm in the right mood to complete a mission or two! And as an added bonus you can drive the vehicles you come across which was the only disappointment I had with New Vegas. :)

The PC I have simply isn't powerful enough to play Far Cry 4 which has recently come out and if Far Cry 3 is anything to go by, this is going to be a fantastic game for me to play, so it may be time to replace my 360 for the One!

So, why the XBox One and not the PS4 I hear you say?! Put simply, the controller. I cant get on with the PlayStation controllers, they just dont feel very confortable whereas the XBox 360 controller (which the One is based on) feels great and I can use it OK.

Looking around I can see that I have a couple of old hard disk drives, a load of DVDs, a blueray player I dont use and an Apple Airport Extreme that I no longer use so I think I shall send them off to www.cex.co.uk and use what I get for them towards the XBox One...

Saturday, 17 May 2014

Speed is Everything

Everybody wants more speed as we expect to be able to do more things on our computers in a speedier time than ever before. There isn't a magic wand you can wave over your computer to make it suddenly go faster but there are a whole host of things you can done (some cost money, others don't).

In this blog entry I will give you some suggestions - you might try them all and have a super-fast computer or you might just try one or two, it all depends on how much money you want to spend...

With 'instant-on' devices such as tablets and smart phones becoming more and more commonplace we are getting used to being able to use technology pretty much instantaneously and when we have to go on to our aging computers and wait minutes for the things to boot up, load Windows and then show the desktop or new-fangled start screen you can see why people are getting frustrated with their computers and are looking for ways to speed them up.

Software To Speed Up Your Computer

First things first whatever you do, don't download/install any software promising miracles to speed up your computer, most just clean up the temporary files and if you are lucky enough to notice a speed increase it tends not to be very much and ones all the temp files have come back your computer will grind to a halt once again.

CPU (Processor)

Secondly if you have anything less than an Intel Core2Duo (or equivalent) then it's really time you upgraded to an i3 or better as there's not a great deal worth doing to try and speed a computer of that age right now.

In the days of the 386, 486 and the first couple of Pentiums it was worthwhile looking for a CPU upgrade, but these days the cost of such upgrades compared the the extra performance you end up with doesn't tend to be worth it -this isn't always the case but most often is.